AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And so she’d waited, for almost half an hour, only to find that it wasn’t a train that had been sent to pick up the passengers at all. It was a bus and, of course, it had taken longer than the train ever would have, longer than a taxi would have, too, had she taken one when the train had first ground to a halt. The icing on the cake had come when they’d finally reached Stratham and for endless minutes, there hadn’t been a cab in sight.
“Aunt Laurel?”
Laurel looked up. Dawn and her handsome young groom had reached her row of pews.
“Baby,” she said, fixing a bright smile to her face as she reached out and gave the girl a quick hug.
“That was some entrance,” Dawn said, laughing.
“Oh, Dawn, I’m so sorry about—”
Too late. The bridal couple was already moving past her, toward the now-open doors and the steps that led down from the church.
Laurel winced. Dawn had been teasing, she knew, but Lord, if she could only go back and redo that awful entrance.
As it was, she’d stood outside the little church after the cab had dropped her off, trying to decide which was preferable, coming in late or missing the ceremony, until she’d decided that missing the ceremony was far worse. So she’d carefully cracked the doors open, only to have the wind pull them from her hands, and the next thing she’d known she’d been standing stage-center, with every eye in the place on her.
Including his. That man. That awful, smug-faced, egotistical man.
Was he Nicholas’s guardian? Well, former guardian. Damian Skouras, wasn’t that the name? That had to be him, considering where he’d been standing.
One look, and she’d known everything she needed to know about Damian Skouras. Unfortunately she knew the type well. He had the kind of looks women went crazy for: wide shoulders, narrow waist, a hard body and a handsome face with eyes that seemed to blaze like blue flame against his olive skin. His hair swept back from his face like the waves on a midnight sea, and a tiny gold stud glittered in one ear.
Looks and money, both, Laurel thought bitterly. It wasn’t just the Armani dinner jacket and black trousers draped down those long, muscled legs that had told her so, it was the way he held himself, with careless, masculine arrogance. It was also the way he’d looked at her, as if she were a new toy, all gift-wrapped and served up for his pleasure. His smile had been polite but his eyes had said it all.
“Baby,” those eyes said, “I’d like to peel off that dress and see what’s underneath.”
Not in this lifetime, Laurel thought coldly.
She was tired of it, sick of it, if the truth were told. The world was filled with too many insolent men who’d let money and power go to their heads.
Hadn’t she spent almost a year playing the fool for one of them?
The rest of the wedding party was passing by now, bridesmaids giggling among themselves in a pastel Hurry of blues and pinks, the groomsmen grinning foolishly, impossibly young and good-looking in their formal wear. Annie went by with her ex and paused only long enough for a quick hug after which Laurel fell back into the crowd, letting it surge past her because she knew he’d be coming along next, the jerk who’d stared at her and stripped her naked with his eyes...and yes, there he was, bringing up the rear of the little procession with one of the bridesmaids, a child no more than half his age, clinging to his arm like a limpet.
The girl was staring up at him with eyes like saucers while he treated her to a full measure of his charm, smiling at her with his too-white teeth glinting against his too-tanned skin. Laurel frowned. The child was positively transfixed by the body-by-health club, tan-by-sunlamp and attitude-by-bank-balance. And Mr. Macho was eating up the adulation.
Bastard, Laurel thought coldly, eyeing him through the crowd, and before she had time to think about it, she stepped out in the aisle in front of him.
The bridesmaid was so busy making goo-goo eyes at her dazzling escort that she had to skid to a stop when he halted.
“What’s the matter?” the girl asked.
“Nothing,” he answered, his eyes never leaving Laurel’s.
The girl looked at Laurel. Young as she was, awareness glinted in her eyes.
“Come on, Damian. We have to catch up to the others.”
He nodded. “You go on, Elaine. “I’ll be right along.”
“It’s Aileen.”
“Aileen,” he said, his eyes still on Laurel. “Go ahead. I’ll be just behind you.”
The girl shot Laurel a sullen glare. “Sure.” Then she picked up her skirts and hurried along after the others.
Close up, Laurel could see that the man’s eyes were a shade of blue she’d never seen before, cool and pale, the irises as black-ringed as if they’d been circled with kohl. Ice, she thought, chips of polar sea ice.
A pulse began to pound in her throat. I should have stayed where I was, she thought suddenly, instead of stepping out to confront him...
“Yes?” he said.
His voice, low and touched with a slight accent, was a perfect match for the chilly removal of his gaze.
The church was empty now. A few feet away, just beyond the doors, Laurel could hear the sounds of laughter but here, in the silence and the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, she could hear only the thump-thump of her heart.
“Was there something you wished to say to me?”
His words were polite but the coldness in them made Laurel’s breath catch. For a second, she thought of turning and running but she’d never run from anything in her life. Besides, why should she let this stranger get the best of her?
There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.
So she drew herself up to her full five foot ten, tossed her hair back from her face and fixed him with a look of cool hauteur, the same one she wore like a mask when she was on public display, and that had helped make her a star on runways from here to Milan.
“Only that you look pathetic,” she said regally, “toying with that little girl.”
“Toying with...?”
“Really,” she said, permitting her voice to take on a purr of amusement, “don’t you think you ought to play games with someone who’s old enough to recognize you for what you are?”
The man looked at her for a long moment, so long that she foolishly began to think she’d scored a couple of points. Then he smiled in a way that sent her heart skidding up into her throat and he stepped forward, until he was only a hand’s span away.
“What is your name?”
“Laurel,” she said, “Laurel Bennett, but I don’t see—”
“I agree completely, Miss Bennett. The game is far more enjoyable when it is played by equals.”
She saw what was coming next in his eyes, but it was too late. Before Laurel could move or even draw back, he reached out, took her in his arms and kissed her.
CHAPTER TWO
LAUREL SHOT a surreptitious glance at her watch.
Another hour, and she could leave without attracting attention. Only another hour—assuming she could last that long.
The man beside her at the pink-and-white swathed table for six, Evan Something-or-Other, was telling a joke. Dr. Evan Something-or-Other, as Annie, ever the matchmaker, had pointedly said, when she’d come around earlier to greet her guests.
He was a nice enough man, even if his pink-tipped nose and slight overbite did remind Laurel of a rabbit. It was just that this was the doctor’s joke number nine or maybe nine thousand for the evening. She’d lost count somewhere between the shrimp cocktail and the Beouf aux Chanterelles.
Not that it mattered. Laurel would have had trouble keeping her mind on anything this evening. Her thoughts kept traveling in only one direction, straight towards Damian Skouras, who was sitting at the table on the dais with an expensively dressed blond windup doll by his side—not that the presence of the woman was keeping him from watching Laurel.
She knew he was, even though she hadn’t turned to confirm it. There was no need. She could feel
the force of his eyes on her shoulder blades. If she looked at him, she half expected to see a pair of blue laser beams blazing from that proud, arrogant face.
The one thing she had confirmed was that he was definitely Damian Skouras, and he was Nicholas’s guardian. Former guardian, anyway; Nick was twenty-one, three years past needing to ask anyone’s permission to marry. Laurel knew that her sister hadn’t wanted the wedding to take place. Dawn and Nick were too young, she’d said. Laurel had kept her own counsel but now that she’d met the man who’d raised Nick, she was amazed her sister hadn’t raised yet a second objection.
Who would want a son-in-law with an egotistical SOB like Damian Skouras for a role model?
That was how she thought of him, as an Egotistical SOB. and in capital letters. She’d told him so the next time she’d seen him, after that kiss, when they’d come face-to-face on the receiving line. She’d tried breezing past him as if he didn’t exist, but he’d made that impossible, capturing her hand in his, introducing himself as politely as if they’d never set eyes on each other until that second.
Flushed with indignation, Laurel had tried to twist her hand free. That had made him laugh.
“Relax, Miss Bennett,” he’d said in a low, mocking tone. “You don’t want to make another scene, do you? Surely one such performance a day is enough, even for you.”
“I’m not the one who made a scene, you—you—”
“My name is Damian Skouras.”
He was laughing at her, damn him, and enjoying every second of her embarrassment.
“Perhaps you enjoy attracting attention,” he’d said. “If so, by all means, go on as you are. But if you believe, as I do, that today belongs to Nicholas and his bride, then be a good girl, smile prettily and pretend you’re having a good time, him?”
